Chen Shucheng is opening a new F&B business — selling bubble tea. The veteran Mediacorp actor had recently shuttered his popular Chinese restaurant Teochew City in April this year, due to the worsening Covid-19 pandemic. “We were breaking even when we decided to close. We didn’t earn a big profit or suffer losses,” he had told 8days.sg about the closure.
Which is probably why the indomitable Shucheng could bounce back so quickly. This time, he’s setting up a franchised Singapore outlet for a Malaysian bubble tea brand called Meme Xpress. It’s slated to open by the end of this month in heartland Toa Payoh, and specialises in yogurt and brown sugar-based beverages. “We also have fruity drinks, but yogurt is one of our more unique offerings,” he says.
The space is currently undergoing renovation. Shucheng tells us that it will be a dine-in space “with a few seats, though the shop unit is not big”. Other than Singapore, Meme Xpress also has branches in Malaysian cities like Penang, and Thailand.
To think Shucheng initially shied away from bubble tea. He shares, “I don’t dare to drink anything with milk, so it didn’t occur to me to open a shop selling it. But my daughter and grandchildren love bubble tea, and they kept encouraging me to open a shop.”
Through his daughter and grandkids, he also started to learn more about bubble tea. “I found bubble tea too sweet, but my daughter said, ‘You can opt for less sugar, or go for oolong tea or longding tea’. I realised there are many types of bubble tea now, and bubble tea was so popular during the Circuit Breaker. So we decided to give it a try. Any industry that can earn money, we’ll head there,” laughs Shucheng.
Meme Xpress was chosen as one of his co-shareholders “knew the owner”. He had partnered the same group of investors — including local F&B company Ocean Group — whom he had worked with for Teochew City, and a chain of kopitiam vegetarian food stalls. According to Shucheng, he only invested a “small sum” in this BBT biz. “I don’t want to use up all of my retirement fund!” he jokes. “We didn’t spend much on this shop, as bubble tea outlets cost less to open than a restaurant.”
Five months after closing his eatery Teochew City, Shucheng muses that it was “the right decision” to pull the plug. “A lot of people asked me if I was going to reopen the restaurant. But Teochew cuisine is always for big gatherings, so the safe distancing rules will continue to be tough for us. It’s just harder to run a restaurant now, so I made a decisive call to close it and take back what I’ve invested.”
Read more at https://www.8days.sg/eatanddrink/ne...opening-bubble-tea-shop-in-toa-payoh-13092222
